How to Define Your Niche in Three Easy Steps

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Welcome back to podiatry marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Joined as always with my trusted co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, how's it going today?

I'm fantastic. Hey, big Jim. It seems like we have not spoken for ages, even though it's only been a week or so. But January is always such a busy month, and I don't know if it's because she's getting back into everything, and everybody's sort of getting back into work, everyone seems busy. And you do so much each week that it just feels like we haven't spoken for ages.

Well, people get excited. Right? You know, whether it's New Year's resolutions, or they wanna get moving on the business. Yeah. There's just it's kinda after that lull of the holidays, people are energized to really ramp things up in January, which just makes the time go by, you know, so much faster, staying busy.

So Did did you have a resolution that you started in January and you've you've broken it already? Or

I mean, I'm trying to be more we'll get into this in a future podcast, but I'll talk about my my word of the year.

Oh, Right. Okay.

We'll we'll we'll leave a little cliffhanger there.

Yeah. I I just said that I wasn't gonna drink in January. I usually do dry January. That's always the plan. Doesn't always work out, but it started most of the month has been absolutely fantastic.

So should we get on to today's topic?

Let's do it.

Okay. So today, we're gonna talk about how to define your niche in three easy steps. Not two

Alright.

But three. Don't need four. You just need three of them.

Three is the magic number. Right?

Yeah. And what I wanna point out to people, I'm just gonna go back a little bit just to refresh their memory on what this niche thing is basically all about. So remember your niche is your target market, and and you can have more than one niche. It's that you can do that, but you just shouldn't market to them all at the same time because that just creates confusion. So if you wanted to have a niche around orthotics, but you also want to have a niche around fungal toenails, which my clinic did have, If you try and talk about orthotics and fungal nails at the same time, it would just be weird.

It'd be really weird to do that. So you can have more than one niche, just don't market them at the same time. That's that's the important part.

No, absolutely. You have to be clear with your messaging. Right? If you're saying one thing, you know, one second and then something the other, whether it be yourself or your marketing, your website, you have to make sure there's kind of clear lines of delineation so to really speak to those kind of right fit or ideal patients.

Yeah. And and the other part too is over time, you can expand on your niche. So if you if people think of Amazon we look at Amazon now. It's just a massive big company. But when Amazon started, their niche was books.

And then they went from books to CDs, and then it sort of just built up from there. And even McDonald's. McDonald's don't try and target everybody. If you if you're after fine dining, McDonald's is probably not the place you're gonna go. That's my guess.

That's pretty fancy stuff there. You know, the the the value deals and whatnot. Yeah.

The benefits of creating a niche, and I know this yeah. Sometimes it frightens people, and I don't know why it does. But if you can develop a specialty service or a skill in a particular area or the perception this is the important part. If you can the perception that you have a specialty, you know, specialty in a service or a skill, you can actually charge more for it because people think you are the expert in that particular area.

No. It's definitely like when you like you said, when when you are seen as a specialist, it it gives you a little bit of exclusivity. You know, you're kind of on a different level, and if you, you know, you treat a specific type of patient or do a type of procedure that's that scarcity can lead to financial benefits for sure.

Yeah. And when I had my my clinic in Cairns, this is a perfect example going back ten years ago, all podiatrists in Cairns made orthotics. Most were probably doing five to 10 pairs a year, maybe some did 20 pairs a month. My clinic was doing a 10 to a 30 pairs a month, basically, at the same time because we had positioned ourselves and we had invested in the technology and we'd done the marketing that this is where you come if you wanna get orthotics made. While everybody else was saying, oh, you gotta wait two weeks for your orthotics.

We're saying, you can have them the same day if you really want because we had the milling machines all guaranteed within twenty four hours. We became the place where you got orthotics. That was the niche that we actually went down. Then and that's what we marketed. Heel pain, orthotics because they were heel pain is one of the most popular things that that be true.

Later, and I said this before, we then said we bought lasers to do fungal nails, and then we started doing a lot of marketing in that area because we already owned that market for orthotics. Everybody knew. You wanna get orthotics? You go to ProArch Podiatry. And the other pet yeah.

The odd person would trickle off to the to the other podiatry clinics, but it's because we found that niche and really pushed it. But what's really interesting, even then we had the niche for orthotics, even though we had the niche for laser therapy for fungal nails, this might surprise people, but we still got a ton of phone calls for people wanting routine foot care, and I never once ever did any marketing in that particular area.

What's the thing? Think some people are afraid that if you get too niche, they're like, oh, then this other stuff is not gonna come along. But as you mentioned there, that's not the case.

Yeah. And the the best part with niching is it simplifies all your marketing. So if you know that I wanna do more of this with this type of patient, you know who your ideal patient is and all that, and then that's just where you do your marketing. If you think, oh, no. I do everything for everybody, and I'm yet to see a statue ever built for a generalist.

Nobody says, oh, he was check this statue. This is John. He was really average at everything. He never stood out for any no one builds a statue for anyone who doesn't stand out. So it's always gonna be a good thing if you pick if you pick a particular area.

Like I said, it really just simplifies your marketing. You get, this is what we're talking about. We're talking about orthotics. We're talking about fungal nails. And it saves you money because your marketing is actually focused.

Yeah. You're not spreading it out to, like, eight or 10 different things and kinda spraying and praying and hoping that it works out. You know, when you do have that more niche focus, you're able to really make a bigger impact, you know, with that marketing spend that you you put out there.

Yeah. And like I said earlier on, a lot of podiatrists, you know, they start to fear a little bit. They're thinking, oh, but if I do that, I'm going to lose patience. I'm yet to see any podiatrist who has a niche in a particular area ever lose patients. It just never happens.

And if people could actually get over that fear, I think they'd find they'd have a lot more fun in podiatry. And and when we're talking about niching, there's a guy, Joseph Frenkel, and he's right into wound care, the thing that I don't like. And I remember when he was on the podcast, and that was his niche, wound care. Loved wounds. He he liked it that much.

He was invited to speak on it. He he did his own research in that area. But I said to him, so what percentage of your patients are actually wound care patients? He said, oh, about ten percent. Ninety percent of his clinic was still everything else, but he'd gotten known for wound care.

But it was still only 10% of his practice. So if you have an interest in any particular area of podiatry and you really wanna niche into that area, it doesn't mean it has to become a %. It it might if if you really love it and that's what all you wanna do, but it doesn't have to be that way. You can still do everything if if that's what you wanna do.

Absolutely. Like you said, it doesn't handcuff you. It doesn't mean just because you're not marketing something doesn't mean you can't do it. But if you wanna grow in specific areas, you have to make consistent efforts over time for that to happen.

Yeah. I can't remember the last time I've been handcuffed. It's been a while.

See, am I.

Oh, my. Yeah. But they were fluffy. They were fluffy handcuffs anyway, so nothing nothing nothing bad happened. I'm still here to talk about.

So what I'm gonna run through is the three steps on how to define your niche. Step number one is work out who you do not serve. And that might sound really weird, but it's really important to figure out who do you not serve. Have you heard of Virgin Voyager, the cruise ships?

Yeah. I've heard of those before.

Yeah. It's an adults only cruise. There's no kids. Therefore, there's no water slides. There's no kids club.

There's no family activities. Therefore, there's more room for bars, gyms, and things that adults want to actually do on the boat. Virgin Voyager has already said, this is who we don't serve. So if if you like there there's no buffets. It's just restaurants.

So if you're one of those people that love going, you know, coughing all over everyone's food at the buffet, Mhmm. Then it's probably not the place for you. If you love screaming kids running around everywhere and you're trying to peacefully lie on the pool, you know, these kids doing bomb dives, mean, it's probably not not the cruise ship that you wanna go on. So they've worked out who they actually don't serve. When I had my podiatry business, I didn't treat anybody who had ulcers.

I wasn't interested in anyone that had high risk feet. I didn't do home visits. I didn't do any aged care facilities. I also didn't give accounts to people. So if somebody says, oh, yeah.

I'm not gonna make a point. I do give accounts. No. I said, have the same account policy as, you know, one of the major shopping centers. Over here, have a company.

We have a business grocery store called well, it's been but be like Walmart. Does Walmart give accounts?

No. Not that I'm aware of.

Yeah. So you can't just randomly walk into a Walmart, buy a whole pile of groceries, walk the phone and go, oh, just give us account. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I'm good for it.

And they

go, I don't who you are. That's who we didn't serve. So people who wanted that, that was they were not at Target. And we also didn't put up with any lip from patients. If you were a bit of a, yeah, bit of an a hole, you were gone.

And and and if I ever heard a patient talking rudely to a staff member, I didn't put up with it just because, oh, we have we've gotta look after everybody. It doesn't matter if they're mean and nasty or if they they spit on us or they walk in with no shoes. If you walk down clean with no shoes, you also didn't get an appointment. We were worked out pretty quickly. This is who we don't wanna serve.

So some people find it difficult finding who they who they do serve. First of all, sit down and work out who you don't serve.

No. That makes sense. Like, I think it's it's much more clear, right, when you kind of lay out what you don't want, and it makes it easier to kind of focus in on what you do.

Yeah. And then step number two is define who you are and who you serve. What do you want more of? Yeah. What are the top three services or treatments that you want to provide in your business?

And these are the things these are the services or the treatments that are going to find you. This will work when if you only talk about those three things, and like I said, not at once, but, Bobby, pick three things you really like, pick one of them, and that's what you're gonna really push to start with, people will start realizing that is what this your business is about. And you will slowly start getting more and more of those particular patients. Then you sit down and you go, who is your ideal patient avatar? What do they look like?

Can you actually describe them? And and the big part is who do you enjoy working with? That's who you're gonna serve. If you know what your ideal patient looks like, you know what the ideal services are that you have, and you're really just putting them together. Does it mean every patient walks through your door is gonna be the ideal patient and is gonna be for that ideal service?

Nope. But you will get more of the the ideal patient and more of the ideal service if that's what you're actually hunting down.

Yeah. And by kind of narrowing that down as well, you're gonna if we treat those that type of demographic more often, it's you know, we talk I talk a lot about running medicine or athletes. If you're doing more of that kind of care, you're gonna be providing better care for those folks because you're just kind of more in that world. So whether it's wound care or sports medicine or maybe it's nail related stuff, if those are the areas you like to do by doing more of that care and being clear about that's what you want to do, you can you can be able to do it better than someone that does, you know, 40 or 50 different treatments. So, I mean, obviously, you can do those things, but when you kind of narrow down on those, you know, top three, top five things you want to do and be, like, you know, world class at those things.

Not only does it benefit you, you know, because you're doing well and being known for it, but it's gonna benefit your patients.

Yeah. Well, I in the early days, I loved nail surgery. Just absolutely loved doing it. And I did so many of them that I got really, really good at, and the clinic got really well known that and I I would say to the if I was talking to a doctor or anybody else, I forget anything the ingrown tailor to send to me, I've never had one grow back in. I go, that's how good I am.

And they go, none. I said, never. I've never had one. And that was actually true. I'd never had one grow back in.

I said, I was just naturally really, really good at it. I just got so many neurosurgery patients coming, and then these people come in, we do it, and it wouldn't grow back in. And then they would go back to the doctor. It was bloody right. It didn't grow back.

I had such a good success rate with it. We got more and more of those patients coming in, and then I had then one particular day, I just didn't like doing anymore. Just didn't float my boat, so then had other staff members do it. Just because you have an interest in it, it doesn't mean you have to it has to be what you do for the rest of your life. If your interest change, then you're you're allowed to actually change it and pivot slightly.

Yeah. We're all a work in progress. Right? Got be be be to, you know, what's out there and, you know, what interests you. Because you're gonna when you're when you're motivated by something and you're passionate about something, you're gonna do better work, and you're gonna, you know, perform better for your patients.

So, yeah, I think it definitely don't close yourself off. Leave yourself open to to what happens.

Yeah. There's probably someone listening to this and going, oh, I don't believe you never ever had one ingrained tunnel ground. Okay. It's the truth. It's just it's just the way it was.

It was could be more could be some good luck in there as well. But, anyway, if anyone can find a patient who had ingrown toner and it grew back, please let me know. But I haven't found one yet. So, anyway, the the third part and this is the most difficult thing that people are gonna find to do, is the implementation. It's actually doing this.

So you know who you don't serve. You know who you are and who you serve. Now it's implementing it. Is it clear on your website? When someone comes to your website and they actually have a look at it, does it actually scream, this is what we do?

Because I know when in my old website, you go to it and then it say, you're here because you have heel pain, you want orthotics, you have fungal toenails. That's all it said. That was the home page. And then everywhere you went around, it was all related to heel pain, orthotics, fungal toenails. So when we were marketing something, we got they were the only three things we ever marketed.

When we spoke about those oh, and what? I lied. We did market some other things, but they never worked. So we stopped. This would be really funny.

It is. Do more of what works and stop doing what doesn't work. I think it was quote by Steve Clark. Yeah. It's just it's just crazy that we would do some promotion around shockwave therapy.

We do marketing of that. Yes. We got more patients coming in for shockwave therapy, but was the money was so much less when people were coming for that than it was for other treatment. So it was better to talk about heel pain and getting heel pain patients coming in than it was to talk about shock wave therapy. So, anyway, it's a side note.

Make sure it's on your website. So the implementation is on your website. If you've got a current website and it's not on there, rewrite it if you need to, or at least go through your website and improve the headlines that are there. Is it clear on all your handouts? Any literature, the flyers, anything you're giving to a patient, is it really clear what the the things are that you want more of and who you actually serve?

Is it clear on all your social media pages? If you're just posting rubbish for posting rubbish, please stop doing that. Just just don't post a photo of just just crap because you think, oh, I've been told I've gotta post something once a week. Only post something if it relates to what you want more of and who your ideal patient is.

Yeah. It makes total sense. You need to have that right message. Right? Like, sometimes we we get we kind of get oversaturated by, you know, hearing ourselves think or sometimes seeing messages.

But, you know, all these people that are, you know, glancing on the Internet or looking at a newspaper or any type of advertisement, there has to be consistent messaging so that they know what you offer, and they see it more than once. A lot of times it's gonna take many touch points before they actually pick up the phone to call to your office or build enough trust in you and your clinic. And if you have a consistent message that resonates with the right type of patient you wanna bring in, that's when success happens over time.

Yeah. And that's that was one of the points I was gonna say as well. It's just be very clear with your message. Like I said, who are you for? What are the services you want more of?

Make sure they know who you're for. Because even when when I've done my twelve week reboot, when I did the twelve week reboot, which I'm going to do another online one this year, details coming shortly, and I'm gonna do the live two day one as well. But when I do that, I am really upfront and honest when I say, it is probably the most expensive two day or two day event or twelve week online course you'll ever do. It's not cheap. It's it is probably be the most expensive one you'll do when it's got to do with business and marketing.

But the reason I do that is because I don't want tight ass tire kickers trying to go, oh, can I just give that I wanna drain you for as much information as I can and pay you as little as possible? Because those people are of no interest to me. And even if you gave them all the information for free, they're not gonna do anything with it. I want people to do the reboot who are parting with some good money, and therefore, are gonna be prepared to actually put the time and effort in afterwards to apply that. And even if they don't apply at all, which they're not going to, as long as they apply part of it and they get the success from that, they can go back to what they learned and they can do more of it.

And just over time and or they may wanna work with me long term. So I know if somebody does the nearly most nearly everybody I work with has done the reboot at some stage. And then from the reboot, they end up working with me because they just know well, I know who they are. They know who I am. But pricing the reboot at a certain thing as well gets rid of certain podiatrists.

And I don't I make no apologies for that. I mean and nasty. No.

Just see provide value and expect to, you know, if if someone's willing to put the time and effort into it along with a lot of money, you know, they're they're gonna be part committed and really try to implement what you're saying. So I definitely understand that.

I know straight away people look after an $80 t shirt far more than they look after a free t shirt. I know when I've been at podcasting events and I've got a whole pile of, you know, free t shirts, And some of them are great that I have looked after. But some of them, yeah, you put them on, yeah, yeah, it's okay. Next, I'll be painting outside with it. But if that was an $80 t shirt, this thing go nowhere near paint.

It's staying as far away from it as possible. So anyway, the last thing I just wanna say is it it actually takes discipline to say no to certain patients. When a patient comes in or somebody might contact you and say, hey. Can you do this work for us? It it it is take it does take discipline to say no.

And the reason why you have to say no is so that you have time to say yes to other patients. And and I think that's just with life in general. Even if you look at your whole circle of friends, there's certain friends that you've gotta say no. You don't wanna spend time with them so that you can actually spend time with the ones that you care more about, and you you feel better for being in their company. And yeah.

So that's that's what I'm gonna finish on, Jim.

No. I like I like that. I think we talked about it in previous podcasts, but it's also, you know, doing the actual scheduling to make that happen. Right? Like, you can't if you say you don't wanna do any more, you know, chipping and clipping at the nails and you still let those people schedule whenever they want to on your schedule, you know, that's gonna be kinda become a self fulfilling prophecy.

So if you, you know, make it a day initially or an afternoon over time, you have to kind of gradually work those things out of your life in order to get more, types of procedures and types of patients into practice that you really want. It's putting those realistic steps and taking action in it. I totally agree with you there.

Yeah. And that's why I say to coaching clients, some of the biggest challenge we have or butt heads at the beginning is when I'll be talking about the type of patients that's when we want more of, what who they don't serve. So you'll start trying to adjust their diary so they see less of who they don't wanna serve, and it takes so long to get them just to do it. Oh, but, you know, if they come to me, where else are they gonna go? What are they gonna do?

You go, well, how do you have a holiday? When you take a two week holiday, you plan ahead, you block it out, you take two weeks off. This is exactly the same thing. You just start massaging the diary to fit what you wanna do, what you wanna do over the more of the services you wanna provide, and that's the part that's the hard part. Part three, implementing it.

It's actually doing doing the work. So Absolutely. Okay, Jim. I think I've said enough. I've upset enough people.

Well,

if they made it this far

That's true. They made it this Yeah. It's alright. Okay, Jim. I look forward to talking to again next week.

It's okay, Tyson. Okay. Bye. Bye now.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDaniel. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.